CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS AFTER 1:00 A.M. Most of the revelers had gone home, and only Arno and Willie and a man named Happy Saul remained of the main group. Happy Saul had suffered nerve damage to his face as a child, and it had contorted his mouth into a permanently fixed grin. Nobody ever sat next to Happy Saul at a funeral. It looked bad. Unusually—for it was often the case that men with nicknames like “Happy” or “Smiley” tended to be seriously angry and depressed individuals, the kind who never saw a bell tower without experiencing visions of themselves picking off bystanders with a rifle—Happy Saul was a contented guy, and good company. At that very moment, he was telling Willie and Arno a joke so inconceivably filthy that Willie was sure he was going straight to hell just for listening to it.
Angel and Louis were now alone in the corner. The Detective had gone. He didn’t drink much anymore, and he had an early start back to Maine the next morning. Before he left, Willie opened the gift that the Detective had brought: it was a bill of acceptance for a delivery of old packing crates, signed by Henry Ford himself, framed with a picture of the great man above it.
“I thought you could hang it in the shop,” said the Detective, as Willie gazed at the photograph, his fingertips tracing the signature beneath.
“I’ll do that,” said Willie. “It’ll have pride of place in the office. Nothing else around it. Nothing.” He was touched, and a little guilty. His earlier thoughts about the Detective now seemed un-generous. Even if they were true, there was more to him than his demons. He shook the Detective’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “For this, and for coming along tonight.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it. Be seeing you, Willie.”
“Yeah, next time.”
Willie had returned to Arno and Happy Saul.
“Nice thing to get,” said Arno, holding the frame in his hands.
“Yeah,” said Willie. He was watching the Detective as he said goodnight to Nate and headed into the night. Even though Willie was at least two sheets to the wind, there was an expression on his face that Arno had never seen before, and it worried him.
“Yeah, it is…”
The two men sat close together, but not too close, Louis’s arm draped casually across the seat behind his partner’s head. Nate didn’t have a problem with their relationship. Neither did Arno, or Willie, or even Happy Saul, although if Happy Saul did have a problem there would have been no way to tell without asking him. But not everyone in Nate’s was so liberal minded, and while Angel and Louis would happily have confronted, and then quietly pummeled, anyone who had the temerity to question their sexuality or any displays of mutual affection that they might have felt inclined to show, they preferred to keep a low profile and avoid such encounters, in part so that they wouldn’t cause trouble for Nate, and in part because other aspects of their lives demanded that they remain inconspicuous whenever possible, inasmuch as a tall, immaculately attired black man who could cause sweat to break out on an iceberg on a cold day and a small, shabby person who, when he walked down the street, made it look like the garbagemen had missed some of the trash could fail to attract attention to themselves. They had moved on to brandy, and Nate had broken out his best snifter glasses for the occasion. The glasses were big enough to house goldfish. There was music playing in the background: Sinatra-Basie from ’62, Frank singing about how love is the tender trap. Nate was polishing down the bar, humming along contentedly to the song. Usually, Nate would have started to close up by now, but he appeared in no hurry to make people leave. It was one of those nights, the kind where it felt like the clocks have been stopped and all those inside were safely insulated from the troubles and demands of the world. Nate was content to let them stay that way for a while. It was his gift to them.
“Looks like Willie had a good time,” said Louis. Willie was swaying slightly on his chair, and his eyes had the dazed look of a man who has recently been hit on the head with a frying pan.
“Yeah,” said Angel. “I think some of those women wanted to give him a special gift all of their own. He’s lucky to be wearing his clothes.”
“We’re all lucky that he’s wearing his clothes.”
“There is that. He seems kind of, I don’t know, not himself tonight?”
“It’s the occasion. Makes a man philosophical. Makes him dwell on his mortality.”
“That’s a cheerful thought. Maybe we could start a line of greeting cards, put that on them. Happy Mortality Day.”
“You been pretty quiet tonight as well.”
“You complain when I talk too much.”
“Only when you got nothing to say.”
“I always have something to say.”
“That’s your problem right there. There’s a balance. Maybe Willie could install a filter on you.”
His fingers gently brushed the back of his partner’s neck. “You gonna tell me what’s up?”
Although there was nobody within earshot, Angel still glanced casually around before he spoke. It never hurt to be careful.
“I heard something. You remember William Wilson, better known as Billy Boy?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah, I know who he is.”
“Was.”
Louis was silent for a moment. “What happened to him?”
“Died in a men’s room down in Sweetwater, Texas.”
“Natural causes?”
“Heart failure. Brought on by someone sticking a blade through it.”
“That don’t sound right. He was good. He was an animal, and a freak, but he was good. Hard to get close enough to take him with a knife.”
“I hear there were rumors that he’d been overstepping the mark, adding flourishes to simple jobs.”
“I heard that, too.” There had always been something wrong with Billy Boy. Louis had seen it from the start, which was why he had decided not to work with him, once he was in a position to pick and choose. “He always did like inflicting pain.”
“Seems like someone decided that he’d done it once too often.”
“Could have been one of those things: a bar, booze, someone decides to pull a knife, gets his friends to help,” said Louis, but he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind.
“Could have been, except the place was near empty when it happened, and we’re talking about Billy Boy. I remember what you told me about him, from the old days. Whoever took him must have been a whole lot better than good.”
“Billy was getting old.”
“He was younger than you.”
“Not much, and I know I’m getting old.”
“I know it, too.”
“That you’re getting old?”
“No, that you’re getting old.”
Louis’s eyes briefly turned to slits.
“I ever tell you how funny I find you?” he asked.
“No, come to mention it, you don’t.”
“It’s cause you ain’t. At least now you know why. The blade enter from the front, or the back?”
“Front.”
“There a paper out on him?”
“Someone would have heard.”
“Could be that someone did. Where’d you get this from?”
“Saw it on the internet. I made a call or two.”